SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - Earlier this year, the Scheels Sports Park opened on the south side of Springfield, opening the doorway for athletes from across the country to compete in Illinois' capital city.
With the debut of one of the world's largest inflatable sports domes comes the 13,000-square-foot Springfield Clinic training center.
The facility, which officially opened in February 2026, serves as a location where primarily local athletes can develop their bodies, but also recover following injury.
"The proximity to the rehabilitation team has been unbelievable," said Bo Bennett, the clinic's operations manager. "We work with a lot of people who are post-surgery. We do spend a lot of time trying to get them a little bit closer to that goal."
The center currently serves nearly 100 clients. Most are teenagers to collegiate athletes in their 20s, but trainers have worked with kids as young as six years old. Programs are tailored to various age groups to help them meet specific benchmarks.
"Kids just need to get stronger," Bennett pointed out. "But as we start to work with those 14, 15, 16 and older athletes, it does get quite a bit more specialized. We base it not only on sport, but also on gender and position that they play."
The facility aims to maximize the potential of trainees by making the most of its given space. Every piece of equipment has a home. Custom workout stations include bars with various grip points for bench exercises and squat racks. Attached are also cables, resistance bands, chains and adjustable dumbbells.
"We can essentially program an entire 45-minute workout where the kid essentially covers 15-square-feet," Bennett said.
In addition to the workout stations, the facility includes plyometric boxes and balls. Workouts incorporate these pieces of equipment to help clients apply more force, whether it be through their legs when jumping or from their hips and arms when twisting.
Half of the clinic floor is a 30-yard turf space where coaches will help with their clients' explosiveness. Trainees will work on proper sprint form and pulling weighted sleds across the space. For distance or top-speed training, treadmills and bikes are also located on the turf.
"We've spent a lot of time getting this developed and designed the way we wanted it to end up," Bennett said. "We spend a lot of time working with the athletes, just allowing the kids to have a place relatively close to home where they can work on their skills and hopefully play at the next level."
One of the more high-tech pieces of equipment in the facility is a set of force plates which feed data collected via a computer to trainers. The information can help understand a patient's ability to balance or jump and determine if they favor one leg or another.
No matter each athlete's needs, the Springfield Clinic trainers make the development of each trainee a top priority.
"We take a lot of pride in what we do," Bennett added. " We spend a lot of time making sure that what we're doing is the best. It's not a subjective thing. We spend a lot of time doing research and studying the latest trends [in] strength and conditioning."
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